Presence

I used to read books to Madi when she was little too. Our bedtime ritual was less about reading and more about singing. She is seventeen now. There is no bedtime ritual. But I still try to steal time with her, one-on-one, whenever I can. Today it was building outdoor furniture, then watching her rearrange it endlessly to find just the right place for every piece.

It was never about the furniture. Just like reading Goodnight Moon to Caleb was never about the book.

Two people in a room. One holding a book that does not need to be open. The other sitting on a lap or leaning into a side, mouthing the words before they are said. We were not reading. We were staying.

I once wrote that happiness is not experiences. It is presence. Driving around at 2 a.m. with a screaming baby, hoping the car noise would put him to sleep, does not feel like connection. Neither does a peaceful 873rd reading of a children’s book. But both are bonds of pure love built in the accumulated minutes of just being in the same room, the same car, the same quiet.

His crying stopped. My screaming began June 2018.

When I stumbled into an old Hangouts conversation I had with Caleb, he was suddenly here. His voice in the text, his pride at fixing a phone problem I would have helped with if he had asked. Then I saw his status: “Away.” For a moment I was home with him. Then I was not, yanked back into a world where his name on a screen is the closest I get.

His Twitter posts are a twisted version of connection. He jokes. He laughs. He loves Coldplay and the downtrodden. He boasts that he finally beat me at Othello. I find him still talking, still reminding me of trivialities that are now the most important bits that ever existed. His voice is preserved. But the connection only works one direction now. I can read him. He cannot hear me.

Being in that room with him, hearing his breathing slow, feeling his weight relax into me, was so much more than helping my son fall asleep. Every moment of presence I had with Caleb was a version of that room. When he exhausted himself crying and slept with his cheek pressed against mine. The hours driving to the eye doctor multiple times a week for years. The seventeen-hour drive to Iowa, debating why the seven quintillion ears of corn we passed would be so expensive. The forty-four-hour drive home from California when he opened up about not wanting to work for NASA anymore, or even be an engineer. Even the last time I saw him, May 2018, watching an Avengers movie on the big screen. I have no picture from that day. I have the presence, and it has to be enough, because it is all I have.

I wrote in the first Goodnight Moon post that the book is about leaving. About saying goodbye to everything in a room you will not return to the same way again. That is true. But I missed something.

The book is also about stalling.

The child does not have to say goodnight to the mush. No one has ever needed to say goodnight to mush. Or socks. Or mittens. The child names every object because every object is one more reason to stay. One more breath before the lights go out. One more word before the room goes quiet.

Caleb is not the only procrastinator in this family. We were both putting off the end of the day. Every reading of that book was a negotiation with time. One more page. One more object. One more goodnight to something, anything, so neither of us has to stop.

Talk to me 

      just 

            one 

                    more 

                            time.